JOHN LINDER: “What we have learned after 86 years of the current system, if we had sat down at the beginning in 1913 and said how can…”

“What we have learned after 86 years of the current system, if we had sat down at the beginning in 1913 and said how can we build a tax system that will punish people for working hard and earning, that will be obstructive of capital formation, we could not have done a better job than we have done here. Our tax system is the single biggest impediment to people reaching from the first rung of the economic ladder to the second, because the harder you work, the more you save, the more you invest, the more we take. It is a system that is inefficient. We have seen testimony from the Kemp Commission to Harvard studies that say for a small businessman or woman to comply with the code, collect and remit $1 in business income taxes, it costs them anywhere from $4 to $7 to do that. It is un-understandable. Our own IRS tells us that if you call the IRS for help filling out your own tax return for an answer to a question, 25 percent of the answers they give you are in error.”